An official with Save the Children is denying any link between the international aid group and the U.S. operation to hunt down and kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

ISLAMABAD— An official with Save the Children is denying any link between the international aid group and the U.S. operation to hunt down and kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Absolutely none,” Cicely McWilliam, a media spokesperson for Save the Children Canada, told the Star.

The Pakistani government has ordered foreign staff members of Save the Children to leave the country apparently based on reports that it helped facilitate meetings between the U.S. and a doctor who allegedly helped orchestrate the successful search for bin Laden. There is no Canadian Save the Children staff on the ground in Pakistan.

Ghulam Qadri said the Ministry of Interior informed the organization earlier this week that its six foreign staffers would have to leave the country within two weeks, although they have since been able to extend the deadline.

McWilliam said the decision will have no effect on the aid group’s work in Pakistan, explaining that about 2,000 Pakistani employees across the country will continue to work despite the expulsion.

“Save the Children mainly employs national staff when we work in a country … so it is not having an impact on our programming” she said, adding that there is a CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) funded program in Pakistan.

McWilliam said the aid group had only been informed of the expulsion order in the past 48 hours “and so we are investigating it now and addressing it with the local government.”

Ghulam said the ministry gave no reason for the expulsion: “We are working with the government to find out the details for this action.” The ministry could not be reached for comment.

After the May 2011 American raid that killed bin Laden, Pakistan arrested Shakil Afridi, the doctor who allegedly helped the United States track down the Al Qaeda leader. Afridi was said to have run a fake vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and try to verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed him.

Afridi was later convicted and sentenced to 33 years for high treason. The U.S. has been pushing for his release and praised his actions but in Pakistan he is viewed with disdain by many including security officials for helping a foreign intelligence agency operate within its borders.

In the wake of Afridi’s arrest Pakistani officials have become increasingly suspicious of groups with international ties, and many aid groups have reported that it is becoming more difficult to obtain visas.

A lawyer for the doctor, Samiullah Khan, said Pakistani investigators in a report concluded that Afridi met with some foreigners in connection with the vaccination drive, including someone from Save the Children in Islamabad. Khan says his client denies the charges and that he is innocent.

Qadri said there’s no evidence suggesting that it worked with Afridi and that the aid group has already given the government all the information it has asked for as part of its investigation.

Qadri said he expects that the foreign staffers will have to leave but said they may be able to return at a future date.

The expulsion was first reported by the British newspaper The Guardian.

Save the Children is an international aid group with operations in more than 50 countries around the world that aims to improve the lives of children. The group has been working in Pakistan since 1979, according to its website. Recently it has been helping some of the roughly 250,000 people who have fled fighting in Pakistan’s Khyber agency, a tribal area that borders Afghanistan.